NY Jets hold significant advantage over Steelers in overlooked area

Few people outside the tri-state area believe in Aaron Glenn and the New York Jets heading into Sunday’s season opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

One of the two teams has not had a losing record since 2003. The other has not made the playoffs since 2010. Why should anyone side with the latter?

Oddsmakers seem to agree, as the Jets are 2.5-point home underdogs on Sunday. ESPN Analytics is giving New York only a 41% chance of winning on its own field, despite facing the same quarterback who won five games for them last year.

If the Jets are going to beat the odds, they must maximize their advantages in areas overlooked by the masses.

The general public forms its expectations based on surface-level factors: the history of the franchises involved, the quarterbacks, the wide receivers, and so on. But there is so much more that goes into deciding a football game, and not all of it is considered when determining odds and expectations.

New York holds a substantial advantage in one of those overlooked areas.

The Jets’ hidden edge vs. Pittsburgh

Sunday’s game figures to be a clash of titans on special teams.

Pittsburgh had the NFL’s second-best special teams unit of the 2024 season, based on FTN Fantasy’s DVOA metric. Meanwhile, New York’s special teams unit carries high expectations after overhauling its personnel with many on-paper upgrades.

While the Steelers thrived on special teams in 2024, their excellence was entirely built upon two units: kicking and punting.

Chris Boswell had a first-team All-Pro season at kicker, while the punting unit forced four takeaways. These two units pushed Pittsburgh to an elite overall performance on special teams.

However, there were cracks across their other units. While the kicking and punting units combined for a DVOA of +34.6, the punt return, kick return, and kick coverage units combined for a DVOA of -6.3.

The Steelers particularly struggled in one of those three areas: kick return coverage. With a DVOA of -5.5, they had the NFL’s 30th-ranked kickoff unit.

Pittsburgh had a very rough time preventing yardage on kick returns. While the Steelers did not allow any touchdowns, they allowed opponents to start past the 30-yard line (the 2024 touchback marker) on a whopping 18 total kickoffs, the third-most in the NFL.

The two teams who ranked above them, Washington and New Orleans, had significantly more kickoff attempts – Pittsburgh allowed the opponent to start past the 30-yard line on a higher percentage of kick returns than both of those teams.

From a consistency standpoint, there was arguably no team worse at defending kickoffs than the Steelers last season.

That makes the Jets a daunting mismatch.

New York boasts the most prolific active kick returner in the NFL, Kene Nwangwu. Since entering the NFL in 2021, Nwangwu leads the league with four kick return touchdowns; no other player has more than two.

In 2024, Nwangwu scored a touchdown on his first kick return of the season with the Jets, one of just three attempts he would have all year. Sticking around to compete for a roster spot in 2025, Nwangwu displayed his worth in the preseason, taking both of his kick returns past the 35-yard line (the new touchback marker in 2025).

Kick return attempts are expected to skyrocket across the NFL this season. With the touchback out to the 35-yard line, teams will likely kick far fewer touchbacks than in 2024, preferring to take their chances with a return instead of gifting a 65-yard path to the end zone.

On Sunday, the first week of this expected spike in kick returns, we will see one of the NFL’s worst kick coverage units from a year ago square off against the league’s best active returner.

It could be a thrilling start for the Jets’ first-year special teams coordinator, Chris Banjo.

Making matters more exciting for the Jets, Pittsburgh lost some of its best special teams players from the 2024 season. Three of the Steelers’ four highest-graded special teams players (per PFF) – James Pierre, Jeremiah Moon, and Mark Robinson – are not on the 53-man roster.

Pierre is on the practice squad and could be called up, but the Steelers would still be without the 13 special teams tackles to just 2 missed tackles that Moon and Robinson combined for last season. If they do not call up Pierre, who had 11 tackles and zero misses, the Steelers’ already-shaky coverage unit will be down its three best players.

The preseason did not provide much hope for the quality of Pittsburgh’s special teams play on the roster’s back end. The Steelers fielded PFF’s 27th-ranked special teams grade in the preseason. New York, meanwhile, placed fifth.

It was only the preseason, but special teams metrics from the preseason are slightly more predictive than offense or defense since many of the players who logged those reps will be playing in the regular season. In the 2024 preseason, the Jets ranked 21st in PFF’s special teams grade, and they ended up placing 22nd in the regular season.

Coming off a season of poor kick return coverage, the Steelers lost some of their most reliable special teams players, and they did not perform very well on special teams in the preseason. They are now set to face off against a returner with four kick return touchdowns in as many seasons, in the first week of a new rule that should pump up the volume of kick returns.

Advantage: Jets.